Габриэль Гарсиа Маркес3.7 Повесть о поре, когда желания еще живы, а силы уже на исходе, - и о странной, почти мистической любви, настигшей человека в конце бездарно прожитой жизни, полной унылой работы и пошлого, случайного секса.
Любовь, случившаяся теперь, гибельна и прекрасна, она наполняет существование героя новым смыслом - и позволяет ему на мгновение увидеть без прикрас и иллюзий всю красоту, жестокость и быстротечность бытия…
Харуки Мураками4.1 Я заметил, что на груди белой майки налипло что-то черное, по форме - вроде большой бабочки с раскрытыми крыльями... В мерцающем свете люминесцентной лампы стало понятно: это темно-красное кровавое пятно. Кровь свежая, еще не засохла. Довольно много. Я наклонил голову и понюхал пятно. Никакого запаха. Брызги крови - совсем немного - оказались и на темно-синей рубашке, где она была не так заметна. А на белой майке - такая яркая, свежая...
Кошмарное странствие по лабиринтам души - в новом романе Харуки Мураками "Кафка на пляже".
Ник Хорнби3.8 Смешной, грустный и глубоко трогательный роман "Долгое падение" задает нам важные вопросы: о жизни и смерти, о незнакомцах и дружбе, о любви и боли, а также о том, сможет ли каждый из четырех неудачников разглядеть себя сквозь долгую, темную ночь души.
"В новогоднюю ночь на крышу лондонской многоэтажки с вполне определенными намерениями вылезает телеведущий Мартин Шарп, чья карьера бесславно закончилась. Он уже почти прыгнул, но тут на крыше возникает 51-летняя Морин. Следующая - Джесс, безбашенная девица, потерявшая бойфренда. В хвост пристраивается Джей-Джей - неудачник рок-музыкант, а ныне разносчик пиццы. Дальше, застигнутые за таким интимным занятием, как самоубийство, они настолько смущаются, что откладывают мероприятие и принимаются "оправдываться", - так и начинается их 400-страничный "путь вниз".
- Афиша
"Из этого могла бы получиться замечательная пьеса: здесь есть действительно драматическая завязка, четко, почти карикатурно очерченные персонажи, стремительные диалоги. Но Хорнби решил по-другому и не прогадал: у него получился отличный роман, полный неожиданных поворотов и своеобразного черного юмора."
- Time Out
"Ник Хорнби провозглашает простые, в общем-то, истины; но делает это без излишнего пафоса и претензий на великое открытие. Все это и, разумеется, фирменный юмор делают его "британским писателем № 1".
- Ozon.ru
Эдгар Лоренс Доктороу4.3 В романе "Марш" Доктороу изменяет своей любимой эпохе - рубежу веков, на фоне которого разворачивается действие "Регтайма" и "Всемирной выставки", и берется за другой исторический пласт - время Гражданской войны, эпохальный период американской истории.
Роман о печально знаменитом своей жестокостью генерале северян Уильяме Шермане, решительными действиями определившем исход войны в пользу "янки", как и другие произведения Доктороу, является сплавом литературы вымысла и литературы факта.
"Текучий мир шермановской армии, разрушая жизнь так же, как ее разрушает поток, затягивает в себя и несет фрагменты этой жизни, но уже измененные, превратившиеся во что-то новое", - пишет о романе Доктороу Джон Апдайк.
"Марш" Доктороу, - вторит ему Уолтер Керн, - наглядно демонстрирует то, о чем умалчивает большинство других исторических романов о войнах: "Да, война - ад. Но ад - это еще не конец света. И научившись жить в аду - и проходить через ад, - люди изменяют и обновляют мир. У них нет другого выхода".
Мэри Гейтскилл0.0 The extraordinary new novel from the acclaimed author of Bad Behavior and Two Girls, Fat and Thin, Veronica is about flesh and spirit, vanity, mortality, and mortal affection. Set mostly in Paris and Manhattan in the desperately glittering 1980s, it has the timeless depth and moral power of a fairy tale.
As a teenager on the streets of San Francisco, Alison is discovered by a photographer and swept into the world of fashion-modeling in Paris and Rome. When her career crashes and a love affair ends disastrously, she moves to New York City to build a new life. There she meets Veronica—an older wisecracking eccentric with her own ideas about style, a proofreader who comes to work with a personal “office kit” and a plaque that reads “Still Anal After All These Years.” Improbably, the two women become friends. Their friendship will survive not only Alison’s reentry into the seductive nocturnal realm of fashion, but also Veronica’s terrible descent into the then-uncharted realm of AIDS. The memory of their friendship will continue to haunt Alison years later, when she, too, is aging and ill and is questioning the meaning of what she experienced and who she became during that time.
Masterfully layering time and space, thought and sensation, Mary Gaitskill dazzles the reader with psychological insight and a mystical sense of the soul’s hurtling passage through the world. A novel unlike any other, Veronica is a tour de force about the fragility and mystery of human relationships, the failure of love, and love’s abiding power. It shines on every page with depth of feeling and formal beauty.
Robert Littell2.5 Martin Odum is a CIA field agent turned private detective, struggling his way through a labyrinth of past identities - "legends" in CIA parlance. Is he really Martin Odum? Or is he Dante Pippen, an IRA explosives maven? Or Lincoln Dittmann, Civil War expert? These men like different foods, speak different languages, have different skills. Is he suffering from multiple personality disorder, brainwashing, or simply exhaustion? Can Odum trust the CIA psychiatrist? Or Stella Kastner, a young Russian woman who engages him to find her brother-in-law so he can give her sister a divorce.
As Odum redeploys his dormant tradecraft skills to solve Stella's case, he travels the globe battling mortal danger and psychological disorientation. Part Three Faces of Eve, part The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, and always pure Robert Littell, Legends—from unforgettable opening to astonishing ending—again proves Littell's unparalleled prowess as a seductive storyteller.
Robert Littell is today widely considered one of the true grand masters of American spy fiction, hailed for his profound grasp of the ambiguous world of international espionage, grippingly displayed in his thirteen novels. His most recent international bestseller, The Company, was praised as being "popular fiction at its finest" by the Washington Post Book World and as "one of the best spy novels ever written" by the Chicago Tribune. Now delving into one agent's labyrinth of memories and past identities—"legends," in CIA parlance—Legends again displays Littell's unparalleled prowess as a seductive storyteller exploring the clandestine but always very human world of secret agents.
Now a TNT series starring Sean Bean, from the producers of 24 and Homeland.
Пер Нильссон0.0 Twelve-year-old Anon is so lost in his dual fantasies of befriending Sara, the owner of the library card he's found, and of his absentee father's god-like qualities that he doesn't mind that everyone at school is making fun of him. Seventeen-year-old Zarah has her mind on the alarming behavior of her jealous boyfriend as well as her relationship with a woman at work, which suddenly becomes complicated. Nils, who is going through an existential crisis, engages in some risky behavior while exploring how it might feel to be dead. He is also obsessed with Zarah, although he doesn't really know her. Then Nils's friend Hannes makes a misstep that might have deadly consequences. When Anon meets Sara, and Nils meets Zarah, and Anon and Zarah and Nils all come together unexpectedly, their lives take surprising new turns.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz4.0 Friendships, family, grief, joy, rage, faith, doubt, poetry, and love—this complex and sensitive book has room for every aspect of growing up!”—Margarita Engle, Newbery Honor–Winning author of The Surrender Tree Sal used to know his place with his adoptive gay father, their loving Mexican American family, and his best friend, Samantha. But it’s senior year, and suddenly Sal is throwing punches, questioning everything, and realizing he no longer knows himself. If Sal’s not who he thought he was, who is he? This humor-infused, warmly humane look at universal questions of belonging is a triumph.
Джон Грин4.1 Никому, кроме собственных родителей, не интересный тощий Толстячок Майлз Холтер в романтическом поиске неизвестного, но непременно Великого «Возможно» переезжает в закрытую частную школу, где начинается настоящая жизнь: сигареты и вино, красотка Аляска и пышногрудая Лара, надежные друзья и не перестающие досаждать враги, где в воздухе витают новые идеи и чувства, где страшно жарко, но дышится полной грудью, где за пятки кусает страх - страх наказания за неповиновения правилам - и гонит вперед любовь и жажда счастья...
И с этим счастьем удается соприкоснуться, но соприкоснуться всего лишь на миг, после чего приходится, едва оперившись, выходить во взрослую жизнь.
Адам Хохшильд0.0 From the author of the widely acclaimed King Leopold's Ghost comes the taut, gripping account of the world's first grass-roots human rights movementthe fight to free the British Empire's slaves. In early 1787, twelve mena printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slaverycame together in a London printing shop and, combining fiery devotion with cool practicality, began one of the most brilliantly organized campaigns of all time. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques used by citizens" movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements. A deft account of the precipitous rise of this popular crusade and its fierce, powerful enemies, Bury the Chains delivers all the drama, sweep, and surprise of Hochschild's previous histories.
Хилари Сперлинг4.6 “If my story were ever to be written down truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone,” wrote Henri Matisse. It is hard to believe today that Matisse, whose exhibitions draw huge crowds worldwide, was once almost universally reviled and ridiculed. His response was neither to protest nor to retreat; he simply pushed on from one innovation to the next, and left the world to draw its own conclusions. Unfortunately, these were generally false and often damaging. Throughout his life and afterward people fantasized about his models and circulated baseless fabrications about his private life.
Fifty years after his death, Matisse the Master (the second half of the biography that began with the acclaimed The Unknown Matisse) shows us the painter as he saw himself. With unprecedented and unrestricted access to his voluminous family correspondence, and other new material in private archives, Hilary Spurling documents a lifetime of desperation and self-doubt exacerbated by Matisse’s attempts to counteract the violence and disruption of the twentieth century in paintings that now seem effortlessly serene, radiant, and stable.
Here for the first time is the truth about Matisse’s models, especially two Russians: his pupil Olga Meerson and the extraordinary Lydia Delectorskaya, who became his studio manager, secretary, and companion in the last two decades of his life.
But every woman who played an important part in Matisse’s life was remarkable in her own right, not least his beloved daughter Marguerite, whose honesty and courage surmounted all ordeals, including interrogation and torture by the Gestapo in the Second World War.
If you have ever wondered how anyone with such a tame public image as Matisse could have painted such rich, powerful, mysteriously moving pictures, let alone produced the radical cut-paper and stained-glass inventions of his last years, here is the answer. They were made by the real Matisse, whose true story has been written down at last from start to finish by his first biographer, Hilary Spurling.
Энтони Шадид0.0 Winner of the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
A Washington Post Book World Top Five Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Seattle Times Top Ten Best Book of the Year
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
In 2003, The Washington Post's Anthony Shadid went to war in Iraq, but not as an embedded journalist. Born and raised in Oklahoma, of Lebanese descent, Shadid, a fluent Arabic speaker, has spent the last three years dividing his time between Washington, D.C., and Baghdad. The only journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his extraordinary coverage of Iraq, Shadid is also the only writer to describe the human story of ordinary Iraqis weathering the unexpected impact of America's invasion and occupation. Through the moving stories of individual Iraqis, Shadid shows how Saddam's downfall paved the way not just for hopes of democracy but also for the importation of jihad and the rise of a bloody insurgency. "A superb reporter's book," wrote Seymour Hersh; Night Draws Near is, according to Mark Danner, "essential."
Джек Гилберт0.0 More than a decade after Jack Gilbert’s The Great Fires , this highly anticipated new collection shows the continued development of a poet who has remained fierce in his avoidance of the beaten path. In Refusing Heaven , Gilbert
Дайана Престон0.0 The Human Chain Reaction That Led To The Atom Bomb
On December 26, 1898, Marie Curie announced the discovery of radium and observed that "radioactivity seems to be an atomic property." A mere 47 years later, "Little Boy"exploded over Hiroshima. Before the Fallout is the epic story of the intervening half century, during which an exhilarating quest to unravel the secrets of the material world revealed how to destroy it, and an open, international, scientific adventure transmuted overnight into a wartime sprint for the bomb.
Weaving together history, science, and biography, Diana Preston chronicles a human chain reaction of scientists and leaders whose discoveries and decisions forever changed our lives. The early decades of the 20th century brought Einstein's relativity theory, Rutherford's discovery of the atomic nucleus, and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, and scientists of many nations worked together to tease out the secrets of the atom. Only 12 years before Hiroshima, one leading physicist dismissed the idea of harnessing energy from atoms as "moonshine." Then, on the eve of World War II, the power of atomic fission was revealed, alliances were broken, friendships sundered, and science co-opted by world events.
Preston interviewed the surviving scientists, and she offers new insight into the fateful wartime meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr, along with a fascinating conclusion examining what might have happened had any number of events occurred differently. She also provides a rare portrait of Hiroshima before the blast.
As Hiroshima's 60th anniversary approaches, Before the Fallout compels us to consider the threats and moral dilemmas we face in our still dangerous world.
Uzodinma Iweala4.2 As civil war rages in an unnamed West-African nation, Agu, the school-aged protagonist of this stunning debut novel, is recruited into a unit of guerilla fighters. Haunted by his father’s own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander.
While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started—a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family, still intact. As he vividly recalls these sunnier times, his daily reality continues to spin further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. In a powerful, strikingly original voice, Uzodinma Iweala leads the reader through the random travels, betrayals, and violence that mark Agu’s new community. Electrifying and engrossing, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extraordinary new writer.
